We've ranked the best sri lanka books using expert recommendations, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.
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Island of a Thousand Mirrors: A Novel
Nayomi Munaweera
5.0
Before violence tore apart the tapestry of Sri Lanka and turned its pristine beaches red, there were two families; two young women, ripe for love with hopes for the future; and a chance encounter that leads to the terrible heritage they must reckon with for years to come.
One tragic moment that defines the fate of these women and their families will haunt their choices for decades to come. In the end, love and longing promise only an uneasy peace.
A sweeping saga with the intimacy of a memoir that brings to mind epic fiction like The Kite Runner and The God of Small Things, Nayomi Munaweera's Island of a Thousand Mirrors strikes mercilessly at the heart of war. It offers an unparalleled portrait of a beautiful land during its most difficult moments.
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Running in the Family
Michael Ondaatje
4.9
Twenty-five years after leaving his native Sri Lanka for the winters of Canada, a dream of tropical heat and barking dogs lures Michael Ondaatje to return home and revisit a childhood and a family he never fully understood. Ondaatje gathers anecdotes, poems and memories to piece together this portrait of the colourful stories and secrets of his ancestors.
Recommended by Michelle Jana Chan.
Michelle Jana Chan
It would be impossible for me to draw the lines of where Ondaatje transitions from fact to fiction. Maybe even for him it would be impossible. He himself says: ‘Truth disappears with history and gossip tells us in the end nothing of personal relationships.' [source]
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Anil's Ghost
Michael Ondaatje
4.8
An alternate cover edition of this ISBN can be found here.
With his first novel since the internationally acclaimed The English Patient, Booker Prize-winning author Michael Ondaatje gives us a work displaying all the richness of imagery and language and the piercing emotional truth that we have come to know as the hallmarks of his writing.
Anil’s Ghost transports us to Sri Lanka, a country steeped in centuries of tradition, now forced into the late twentieth century by the ravages of civil war. Into this maelstrom steps Anil Tissera, a young woman born in Sri Lanka, educated in England and America, who returns to her homeland as a forensic anthropologist sent by an international human rights group to discover the source of the organized campaigns of murder engulfing the island. What follows is a story about love, about family, about identity, about the unknown enemy, about the quest to unlock the hidden past–a story propelled by a riveting mystery. Unfolding against the deeply evocative background of Sri Lanka’s landscape and ancient civilization, Anil’s Ghost is a literary spellbinder–Michael Ondaatje’s most powerful novel yet.
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Funny Boy
Shyam Selvadurai
4.8
In the world of his large family, affluent Tamils living in Colombo, Arjie is an oddity, a 'funny boy' who prefers dressing as a girl to playing cricket with his brother.
In FUNNY BOY we follow the life of the family through Arjie's eyes, as he comes to terms both with his own homosexuality and with the racism of the society in which he lives. In the north of Sri Lanka there is a war going on between the army and the Tamil Tigers, and gradually it begins to encroach on the family's comfortable life. Sporadic acts of violence flare into full scale riots and lead, ultimately, to tragedy.
Written in clear, simple prose, Syam Selvadurai's first novel is masterly in its mingling of the personal and political.
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Recommended by Amber Dermont.
Amber Dermont
Yes, the consideration of sexuality is so important to part of the character’s life but there’s also so much more going on politically. The book won a Lamda prize which is wonderful. It opens with this really sweet and funny description of this young boy, Arjie, who is seven years old and his favourite game is called ‘bride-bride’ that he plays with his 16-year old cousin. He loves being the bride, a beautiful woman, putting on the veil and having flowers in his hair, he’s attracted to being beautiful and feminine. One of his relatives says “Oh he’s a funny one” which is how he gets his nickname, funny boy. It’s heart-breaking because anyone who is pointed out as being different is going to be bullied and maligned and harmed and what we want in the story is for Arjie to experience love and to have a real connection. When he finally does he comes into his own, but the experience of first love isn’t entirely satisfying either. [source]
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Wave
Sonali Deraniyagala
4.7
On the morning of December 26, 2004, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala lost her parents, her husband, and her two young sons in the tsunami she miraculously survived. In this brave and searingly frank memoir, she describes those first horrifying moments and her long journey since. She has written an engrossing, unsentimental, beautifully poised account: as she struggles through the first months following the tragedy, furiously clenched against a reality that she cannot face and cannot deny; and then, over the ensuing years, as she emerges reluctantly, slowly allowing her memory to take her back through the rich and joyous life she’s mourning, from her family’s home in London, to the birth of her children, to the year she met her English husband at Cambridge, to her childhood in Colombo; all the while learning the difficult balance between the almost unbearable reminders of her loss and the need to keep her family, somehow, still alive within her.
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This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War
Samanth Subramanian
4.7
In the summer of 2009, the leader of the dreaded Tamil Tiger guerrillas was killed, bringing to a bloody end the stubborn and complicated civil war in Sri Lanka. For nearly thirty years, the war's fingers had reached everywhere: into the bustle of Colombo, the Buddhist monasteries scattered across the island, the soft hills of central Sri Lanka, the curves of the eastern coast near Batticaloa and Trincomalee and the stark, hot north. With its genius for brutality, the war left few places and fewer people, untouched.
What happens to the texture of life in a country that endures such bitter conflict? What happens to the country's soul? Samanth Subramanian gives us an extraordinary account of the Sri Lankan war and the lives it changed. Taking us to the ghosts of summers past and to other battles from other times, he draws out the story of Sri Lanka today-an exhausted, disturbed society, still hot from the embers of the war. Through travels and conversations, he examines how people reconcile themselves to violence, how religion and state conspire, how the powerful become cruel and how victory can be put to the task of reshaping memory and burying histories.
This Divided Island is a harrowing and humane investigation of a country still inflamed.
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The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers
Gordon Weiss
4.7
Once known for its exquisite tea, drowsy climate, and amiable people, Sri Lanka was the Indian Ocean jewel of the British Empire. After Independence, the island enjoyed a liberal parliamentary democracy with a lively independent press and a booming economy. It had a judiciary, an efficient economy, and a stability envied by emerging nations. The world expected a leader amongst nations. Instead, in pursuit of power and fundamentalist Buddhism, an oligarchy of Sinhalese political leaders and monks hi-jacked democracy. In response a brutal enemy was born: the Tamil Tigers. The result, one of modern history's longest civil conflicts, spawned a host of horrific innovations: suicide bombers, child soldiers, death squads, violent Buddhism, and murdered journalists. But ethnic conflict is only part of the story. Twenty-seven years on, with Iran, Burma, Libya, and China as its closest allies, democracy has been reduced to a cabal of brothers who control the economy, the courts, and the media. Today they tout their bloody conquest of the Tamil Tiger guerrillas as an example for other nations with 'terrorist' problems. Gordon Weiss, a veteran journalist and UN official for two decades, was firmly entrenched in the conflict as spokesperson for the United Nations in Colombo. He was a close observer as, in just four months in 2009, tens of thousands of civilians perished, cornered, along with the last of the Tamil Tigers on a windy spit. This account unravels the compelling history that leads up to that horrific moment, peeling back the Sri Lankan government's cloak of silence to reveal the events of those weeks beat by beat. "The Cage" offers a rare glimpse into the reality behind the daily headlines: the inner workings of media manipulation, and the plight of international aid workers struggling to provide humanitarian assistance to those caught in the crossfire of a deadly civil conflict.
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Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew
Shehan Karunatilaka
4.7
Some remember his impressive career stats ... others recall his on-field arrogance. Some say he fixed matches . . . others say he was dropped for being Tamil! Who exactly was Pradeep Mathew? And what became of him?
WG Karunasena, a man who spent 64 years drinking arrack and watching cricket decides to find out ...If you have never seen a cricket match; or if you have and it has made you snore ...If you can’t understand why anyone would watch, let alone obsess over this dull game ...... then this IS the book for you
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The Seasons of Trouble: Life Amid the Ruins of Sri Lanka's Civil War
Rohini Mohan
4.7
For three decades, Sri Lanka’s civil war tore communities apart. In 2009, the Sri Lankan army finally defeated the separatist Tamil Tigers guerrillas in a fierce battle that swept up about 300,000 civilians and killed more than 40,000. More than a million had been displaced by the conflict, and the resilient among them still dared to hope. But the next five years changed everything.
Rohini Mohan’s searing account of three lives caught up in the devastation looks beyond the heroism of wartime survival to reveal the creeping violence of the everyday. When city-bred Sarva is dragged off the streets by state forces, his middle-aged mother, Indra, searches for him through the labyrinthine Sri Lankan bureaucracy. Meanwhile, Mugil, a former child soldier, deserts the Tigers in the thick of war to protect her family.
Having survived, they struggle to live as the Sri Lankan state continues to attack minority Tamils and Muslims, frittering away the era of peace. Sarva flees the country, losing his way – and almost his life – in a bid for asylum. Mugil stays, breaking out of the refugee camp to rebuild her family and an ordinary life in the village she left as a girl. But in her tumultuous world, desires, plans, and people can be snatched away in a moment.
The Seasons of Trouble is a startling, brutal, yet beautifully written debut from a prize-winning journalist. It is a classic piece of reportage, five years in the making, and a trenchant, compassionate examination of the corrosive effect of conflict on a people.
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The Cat's Table
Michael Ondaatje
4.7
In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy in Colombo boards a ship bound for England. At mealtimes he is seated at the “cat’s table”—as far from the Captain’s Table as can be—with a ragtag group of “insignificant” adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship crosses the Indian Ocean, the boys tumble from one adventure to another, bursting all over the place like freed mercury. But there are other diversions as well: they are first exposed to the magical worlds of jazz, women, and literature by their eccentric fellow travelers, and together they spy on a shackled prisoner, his crime and fate a galvanizing mystery that will haunt them forever. By turns poignant and electrifying, The Cat’s Table is a spellbinding story about the magical, often forbidden, discoveries of childhood, and a lifelong journey that begins unexpectedly with a spectacular sea voyage.
Two and a half decades into a devastating civil war, Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority is pushed inexorably towards the coast by the advancing army. Amongst the evacuees is Dinesh, whose world has contracted to a makeshift camp where time is measured by the shells that fall around him like clockwork. Alienated from family, home, language, and body, he exists in a state of mute acceptance, numb to the violence around him, till he is approached one morning by an old man who makes an unexpected proposal: that Dinesh marry his daughter, Ganga. Marriage, in this world, is an attempt at safety, like the beached fishing boat under which Dinesh huddles during the bombings. As a couple, they would be less likely to be conscripted to fight for the rebels, and less likely to be abused in the case of an army victory. Thrust into this situation of strange intimacy and dependence, Dinesh and Ganga try to come to terms with everything that has happened, hesitantly attempting to awaken to themselves and to one another before the war closes over them once more.
Anuk Arudpragasam’s The Story of a Brief Marriage is a feat of extraordinary sensitivity and imagination, a meditation on the fundamental elements of human existence—eating, sleeping, washing, touching, speaking—that give us direction and purpose, even as the world around us collapses. Set over the course of a single day and night, this unflinching debut confronts marriage and war, life and death, bestowing on its subjects the highest dignity, however briefly.
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Reef
Romesh Gunesekera
4.6
Reef is the elegant and moving story of Triton, a talented young chef so committed to pleasing his master's palate that he is oblivious to the political unrest threatening his Sri Lankan paradise. It is a personal story that parallels the larger movement of a country from a hopeful, young democracy to troubled island society. It is also a mature, poetic novel which the British press has compared to the works of James Joyce, Graham Greene, V.S. Naipaul, and Anton Chekhov.
With his collection of short stories Monkfish Moon—a New York Times Notable Book of 1993—Romesh Gunesekera quickly established himself as a leading literary voice. Reef earned universal praise from European critics and landed the young author on the short list for the 1994 Booker Prize, England's highest honor for fiction.
Reef explores the entwined lives of Mr. Salgado, an aristocratic marine biologist and student of sea movements and the disappearing reef, and his houseboy, Triton, who learns to polish silver until it shines like molten sun; to mix a love cake with ten eggs, creamed butter, and fresh cadju nuts; to marinade tiger prawns; and to steam parrot fish. Through these characters and the forty years of political disintegration their country endures, Gunesekera tells the tragic, sometimes comic, story of a lost paradise and a young man coming to terms with his destiny.
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Cinnamon Gardens
Shyam Selvadurai
4.6
Set among the upper classes in the gracious, repressive and complex world of 1920s Ceylon (Sri Lanka), this evocative novel tells the story of two people who must determine if it is possible to pursue personal happiness without compromising the happiness of others. A young teacher, Annalukshmi, whose splintered family attempts to arrange an appropriate marriage for her, must decide whether the independence she craves will doom her to a life without love and companionship. It is also the story of Balendran who, respectably married, must suppress-or confront-the secret desires for men that threaten to throw his life into chaos. With sensuous atmosphere and vivid prose, this masterfully plotted novel re-creates a world where a beautiful veneer of fragrant gardens and manners hides social, personal, and political issues still relevant today.
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What Lies Between Us
John Marrs
4.6
In the idyllic hill country of Sri Lanka, a young girl grows up with her loving family; but even in the midst of this paradise, terror lurks in the shadows. When tragedy strikes, she and her mother must seek safety by immigrating to America. There the girl reinvents herself as an American teenager to survive, with the help of her cousin; but even as she assimilates and thrives, the secrets and scars of her past follow her into adulthood. In this new country of freedom, everything she has built begins to crumble around her, and her hold on reality becomes more and more tenuous. When the past and the present collide, she sees only one terrible choice.
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On Sal Mal Lane
Ru Freeman
4.6
A tender, evocative novel, in the tradition of In the Time of the Butterflies and The Kite Runner, about the years leading up to the Sri Lankan civil war.
On the day the Herath family moves in, Sal Mal Lane is still a quiet street, disturbed only by the cries of the children whose triumphs and tragedies sustain the families that live there. As the neighbors adapt to the newcomers in different ways, the children fill their days with cricket matches, romantic crushes, and small rivalries. But the tremors of civil war are mounting, and the conflict threatens to engulf them all.
In a heartrending novel poised between the past and the future, the innocence of the children—a beloved sister and her overprotective siblings, a rejected son and his twin sisters, two very different brothers—contrasts sharply with the petty prejudices of the adults charged with their care. In Ru Freeman’s masterful hands, On Sal Mal Lane, a story of what was lost to a country and her people, becomes a resounding cry for reconciliation.
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Elephant Complex: Travels in Sri Lanka
John Gimlette
4.5
No one sees the world quite like John Gimlette. As The New York Times once noted, “he writes with enormous wit, indignation, and a heightened sense of the absurd.” Writing for both the adventurer and the armchair traveler, he has an eye for unusually telling detail, a sense of wonder, and compelling curiosity for the inside story. This time, he travels to Sri Lanka, a country only now emerging from twenty-six years of civil war. Delving deep into the nation’s story, Gimlette provides us with an astonishing, multifaceted portrait of the island today.
His travels reveal the country as never before. Beginning in the exuberant capital, Colombo (“a hint of anarchy everywhere”), he ventures out in all directions: to the dry zones where the island’s 5,800 wild elephants congregate around ancient reservoirs; through cinnamon country with its Portuguese forts; to the “Bible Belt” of Buddhism—the tsunami-ravaged southeast coast; then up into the great green highlands (“the garden in the sky”) and Kandy, the country’s eccentric, aristocratic Shangri-la. Along the way, a wild and often desperate history takes shape, a tale of great colonies (Arab, Portuguese, British, and Dutch) and of the cultural divisions that still divide this society. Before long, we’re in Jaffna and the Vanni, crucibles of the recent conflict. These areas—the hottest, driest, and least hospitable—have been utterly devastated by war and are only now struggling to their feet.
But this is also a story of friendship and remarkable encounters. In the course of his journey, Gimlette meets farmers, war heroes, ancient tribesmen, world-class cricketers, terrorists, a former president, old planters, survivors of great massacres—and perhaps some of their perpetrators. That’s to say nothing of the island’s beguiling fauna: elephants, crocodiles, snakes, storks, and the greatest concentration of leopards on Earth.
Here is a land of extravagant beauty and profound devastation, of ingenuity and catastrophe, possessed of both a volatile past and an uncertain future—a place capable of being at once heavenly and hellish—all brought to vibrant, fascinating life here on the page.
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The English Patient
Michael Ondaatje
4.5
With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminate this book like flashes of heat lightning.
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The Tea Planter's Wife
Dinah Jefferies
4.5
#1 International bestselling novel set in 1920s Ceylon, about a young Englishwoman who marries a charming tea plantation owner and widower, only to discover he's keeping terrible secrets about his past, including what happened to his first wife, that lead to devastating consequences
Nineteen-year-old Gwendolyn Hooper is newly married to a rich and charming widower, eager to join him on his tea plantation, determined to be the perfect wife and mother. But life in Ceylon is not what Gwen expected.
The plantation workers are resentful, the neighbours treacherous, and there are clues to the past - a dusty trunk of dresses, an overgrown gravestone in the grounds - that her husband refuses to discuss.
Just as Gwen finds her feet, disaster strikes. She faces a terrible choice, hiding the truth from almost everyone, but a secret this big can't stay buried forever....
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Still Counting the Dead
Frances Harrison
4.5
"An extraordinary book. This dignified, just and unbearable account of the dark heart of Sri Lanka needs to be read by everyone." — Roma Tearne, author of Mosquito
The tropical island of Sri Lanka is a paradise for tourists, but in 2009 it became a hell for its Tamil minority, as decades of civil war between the Tamil Tiger guerrillas and the government reached its bloody climax. Caught in the crossfire were hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren, doctors, farmers, fishermen, nuns, and other civilians. And the government ensured through a strict media blackout that the world was unaware of their suffering.
Now, a UN enquiry has called for war crimes investigation, and Frances Harrison, a BBC correspondent for Sri Lanka during the conflict, recounts those crimes for the first time in sobering, shattering detail.
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A Disobedient Girl
Ru Freeman
4.5
The story of two women in Sri Lanka, strangers to one another, yet united by an undying love, as they travel towards an unimaginable destiny.
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Mosquito
Roma Tearne
4.5
'Mosquito' is an epic tale about tender love shattered by the destructive forces of civil war.
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The Boat People
Sharon Bala
4.5
When a rusty cargo ship carrying Mahindan and five hundred fellow refugees from Sri Lanka's bloody civil war reaches Vancouver's shores, the young father thinks he and his six-year-old son can finally start a new life. Instead, the group is thrown into a detention processing center, with government officials and news headlines speculating that among the "boat people" are members of a separatist militant organization responsible for countless suicide attacks—and that these terrorists now pose a threat to Canada's national security. As the refugees become subject to heavy interrogation, Mahindan begins to fear that a desperate act taken in Sri Lanka to fund their escape may now jeopardize his and his son's chance for asylum.
Told through the alternating perspectives of Mahindan; his lawyer, Priya, a second-generation Sri Lankan Canadian who reluctantly represents the refugees; and Grace, a third-generation Japanese Canadian adjudicator who must decide Mahindan's fate as evidence mounts against him, The Boat People is a spellbinding and timely novel that provokes a deeply compassionate lens through which to view the current refugee crisis.
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The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
In her ground-breaking reporting from Iraq, Naomi Klein exposed how the trauma of invasion was being exploited to remake the country in the interest of foreign corporations. She called it "disaster capitalism." Covering Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, and New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic "shock treatment" losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers. The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq. At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. By capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, Klein argues that the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.
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Recommended by Donna Dickenson, George Monbiot, and Mat Whitecross.
Donna Dickenson
Naomi Klein’s argument is that capitalism actually requires deliberately engineered shocks to the economic systems. [source]
The Shock Doctrine explains some of the mechanisms by which patrimonial capital acquires power and enhances its wealth. It’s a brilliant piece of work, and one of those rare books that changes the way you perceive the world. [source]
Mat Whitecross
It starts with the theory that moments of crisis have been utilised by the right wing in the US and other countries to manipulate people into following their agenda. [source]
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July
Karen Roberts
4.4
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The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War
Ben Macintyre
4.4
The celebrated author of A Spy Among Friends and Rogue Heroes returns with his greatest spy story yet, a thrilling Cold War-era tale of Oleg Gordievsky, the Russian whose secret work helped hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union.
If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky. The son of two KGB agents and the product of the best Soviet institutions, the savvy, sophisticated Gordievsky grew to see his nation's communism as both criminal and philistine. He took his first posting for Russian intelligence in 1968 and eventually became the Soviet Union's top man in London, but from 1973 on he was secretly working for MI6.
For nearly a decade, as the Cold War reached its twilight, Gordievsky helped the West turn the tables on the KGB, exposing Russian spies and helping to foil countless intelligence plots, as the Soviet leadership grew increasingly paranoid at the United States's nuclear first-strike capabilities and brought the world closer to the brink of war. Desperate to keep the circle of trust close, MI6 never revealed Gordievsky's name to its counterparts in the CIA, which in turn grew obsessed with figuring out the identity of Britain's obviously top-level source. Their obsession ultimately doomed Gordievsky: the CIA officer assigned to identify him was none other than Aldrich Ames, the man who would become infamous for secretly spying for the Soviets.
Unfolding the delicious three-way gamesmanship between America, Britain, and the Soviet Union, and culminating in the gripping cinematic beat-by-beat of Gordievsky's nail-biting escape from Moscow in 1985, Ben Macintyre's latest may be his best yet. Like the greatest novels of John le Carré, it brings readers deep into a world of treachery and betrayal, where the lines bleed between the personal and the professional, and one man's hatred of communism had the power to change the future of nations.
just finished this yesterday. absolutely fantastic book. super recommend if you're into spycraft and espionage. bravo @BenMacintyre1 https://t.co/4OG4C1cBQ1 [source]
I had a great conversation with Ambassador Micheal Lund Jeppesen of @DKinAfghanistan . On the sidelines of our rich conversation we spoke of the Spy & the Traitor a great book in which Denmark's intelligence features highly. Proud of our alliance & cooperation. https://t.co/47GMb7ETWr [source]
Gady Epstein
Think I’ll read a non-China spy story for a change. Have heard great things about this book https://t.co/QcBa0ozRfG [source]
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The Village in the Jungle
Leonard Woolf, Christopher Ondaatje
4.4
The classic novel of colonial Ceylon (Sri Lanka), first published in 1913, and written by Virginia Woolf's husband.
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When Memory Dies
A. Sivanandan
4.4
A powerful three-generational saga of a Sri Lankan family's search for coherence and continuity in a country broken by colonial occupation and riven by ethnic wars.
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The Rice Mother
Rani Manicka
4.3
Nothing in Lakshmi's childhood, running carefree and barefoot on the sun-baked earth amid the coconut and mango trees of Ceylon, could have prepared her for what life was to bring her. At fourteen, she finds herself traded in marriage to a stranger across the ocean in the fascinating land of Malaysia.
Duped into thinking her new husband is wealthy, she instead finds herself struggling to raise a family with a man too impractical to face reality and a world that is, by turns, unyielding and amazing, brutal and beautiful.
Giving birth to a child every year until she is nineteen, Lakshmi becomes a formidable matriarch, determined to wrest from the world a better life for her daughters and sons and to face every new challenge with almost mythic strength.
By sheer willpower Lakshmi survives the nightmare of World War II and the Japanese occupation -- but not unscathed. The family bears deep scars on its back and in turn inflicts those wounds on the next generation. But it is not until Lakshmi's great-granddaughter, Nisha, pieces together the mosaic of her family history that the legacy of the Rice Mother bears fruit.
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In Extremis: The Life and Death of the War Correspondent Marie Colvin
Lindsey Hilsum
4.3
The devastating biography of Marie Colvin, the foremost war reporter of her generation, who was killed in Syria in 2012
When Marie Colvin was killed by an IED in Homs, Syria, in 2012, at age fifty-six, the world lost one of its most fearless, accomplished, and iconoclastic war correspondents, an eye-patch wearing, party-throwing, and risk-taking female combat reporter who covered the most significant and destructive global calamities of her lifetime. In Extremis: The Life and Death of War Reporter Marie Colvin, written by Colvin's friend and prizewinning fellow reporter Lindsey Hilsum, is a thrilling and powerful investigation into Colvin's epic life and tragic death.
After growing up in a middle-class Catholic family on Long Island, Colvin got her start working for The Sunday Times, where she was driven with reckless abandon to tell the stories of the victims of the major conflicts of our time. She lost an eye reporting in Sri Lanka at the end of their civil war, interviewed Gaddafi twice, and risked her life covering conflict in Chechnya, East Timor, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe. Unsurprisingly, her personal life was as unpredictable as her professional: bold, driven, and complex, she was married multiple times, had many lovers, drank heavily, suffered from PTSD, and refused to be bound by society's expectations for women.
With exclusive access to Colvin's intimate diaries from age thirteen to her death in 2012, interviews with people from every corner of Colvin's extraordinary life, and expert research worthy of Colvin herself, Lindsey Hilsum's In Extremis is a timely and propulsive biography of the foremost war correspondent of her generation.
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Recommended by Samantha Power.
Samantha Power
Just read the gripping, moving @lindseyhilsum biography of the epic war reporter Marie Colvin who was murdered by #Assad. Congrats to Lindsey Hilsum on the book being shortlisted for @CostaBookAwards best biography. https://t.co/WQ8hHZqzao [source]
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The Hungry Ghosts
Shyam Selvadurai
4.3
In Buddhist myth, the dead may be reborn as "hungry ghosts"—spirits with stomach so large they can never be full—if they have desired too much during their lives. It is the duty of the living relatives to free those doomed to this fate by doing kind deeds and creating good karma. In Shyam Selvadurai’s sweeping new novel, his first in more than a decade, he creates an unforgettable ghost, a powerful Sri Lankan matriarch whose wily ways, insatiable longing for land, houses, money and control, and tragic blindness to the human needs of those around her parallels the volatile political situation of her war-torn country.
The novel centres around Shivan Rassiah, the beloved grandson, who is of mixed Tamil and Sinhalese lineage, and who also—to his grandmother’s dismay—grows from beautiful boy to striking gay man. As the novel opens in the present day, Shivan, now living in Canada, is preparing to travel back to Colombo, Sri Lanka, to rescue his elderly and ailing grandmother, to remove her from the home—now fallen into disrepair—that is her pride, and bring her to Toronto to live out her final days. But throughout the night and into the early morning hours of his departure, Shivan grapples with his own insatiable hunger and is haunted by unrelenting ghosts of his own creation.
The Hungry Ghosts is a beautifully written, dazzling story of family, wealth and the long reach of the past. It shows how racial, political and sexual differences can tear apart both a country and the human heart—not just once, but many times, until the ghosts are fed and freed.
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Tamil Tigress: My Story As a Child Soldier in Sri Lanka's Bloody Civil War
Niromi de Soyza
4.3
In 1987, 17-year-old Niromi de Soyza shocked her middle-class Sri Lankan family by joining the Tamil Tigers. Equipped with a rifle and cyanide capsule she was one of the rebels' first female soldiers—this is her story of her time as a guerrilla
How could it be that a well-educated, middle-class, Catholic-educated girl from a respectable family came to be fighting with the Tamil Tigers? The Sri Lanka that Niromi de Soyza knew growing up in Jaffna included daily gun fights, and a systematic campaign by an elected governement to wipe out parts of its own population. In a fit of righteous anger and teenage idealism she joined the Tamil Tigers to defend her rights and the lives of her friends and neighbors. Two days before Christmas, in 1987, she found herself, at the age of 17, as part of a small platoon of militant Tamil Tigers, most of them teenage girls, in an ambush by the Sri Lankan army. With her was her lifelong friend, Ajanthi, also 17. Ajanthi was killed that day as they came under heavy fire. Today Niromi lives in Sydney with her husband and children—and now she is telling her amazing story.
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Lonely Planet Sri Lanka
Lonely Planet, Ryan Ver Berkmoes, et al.
4.3
Lonely PlanetSri Lankais your passport to the most relevant, up-to-date advice on what to see and skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Laze on a pristine, undiscovered beach, wander lost cities and ancient ruins, or hit the markets for a rainbow of exotic fruits and rich spices -all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of Sri Lankaand begin your journey now!
Inside Lonely PlanetSri Lanka Travel Guide:
Full-colour maps and images throughout
Highlightsand itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interests
Insider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots
Essential infoat your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, prices
Honest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks miss
Cultural insights give you a richer, more rewarding travel experience - history, culture, politics, religion, beaches, landscapes, wildlife, environmental issues, cuisine, tea, festivals, events.
Over50colour maps
Covers Colombo, Galle, Kandy, Arugam Bay, Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Jaffna, Uda Walawe National Park, Bundala National Park, hill country, ancient cities, and more The Perfect Choice: Lonely Planet Sri Lanka, our most comprehensive guide to Sri Lanka, is perfect for both exploring top sights and taking roads less travelled.
About Lonely Planet: Lonely Planet is a leading travel media company and the world's number one travel guidebook brand, providing both inspiring and trustworthy information for every kind of traveller since 1973. Over the past four decades, we've printed over 145 million guidebooks and phrasebooks for 120 languages, and grown a dedicated, passionate global community of travellers. You'll also find our content online, and in mobile apps, video, 14 languages, 12 international magazines, armchair and lifestyle books, ebooks, and more, enabling you to explore every day. Lonely Planet enables the curious to experience the world fully and to truly get to the heart of the places they find themselves, near or far from home.
TripAdvisor Travelers' Choice Awards 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category
'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times
'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves, it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia)
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Die Schmetterlingsinsel
Corina Bomann
4.3
Diana Wagenbach steht vor den Trümmern ihrer Ehe, als sie den Nachlass ihrer geliebten Tante in England auflösen muss. In ihren letzten Worten an Diana hatte die Tante sie gebeten, ein lange gehütetes Familiengeheimnis zu lüften. Diana folgt den Hinweisen, die die Tante im prachtvollen Tremayne House für sie hinterlassen hat bis ans andere Ende der Welt in eine exotische Landschaft voller neuer Erfahrungen und Gefühle. Dort stößt sie auf eine bittersüße Prophezeiung, die das Schicksal ihrer Familie für immer veränderte, eine verbotene Liebe, die niemals endete, und auf ihre eigene Bestimmung...
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34
The Ruins Box Set: The Complete Post-Apocalyptic Series (Books 1-4)
T.W. Piperbrook
4.3
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35
The Road From Elephant Pass
Nihal de Silva
4.3
The Road From Elephant Pass won the 2003 Gratiaen Prize for creative writing in English “for its moving story, for its constant feel of real life, for its consistency of narrative momentum, for its descriptive power, for its dramatic use of dialogue to define social context, capture character psychology, and trace the development of a relationship, for its convincing demonstration that resolution of conflict and reconciliation of differences are feasible through mutual experience and regard, and last though not least, for its eminently civilized handling of the last degree of intimacy between a man and a woman.”
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Brixton Beach
Roma Tearne
4.3
London. On a bright July morning a series of bombs bring the capital to a halt. Simon Swann, a medic from one of the large teaching hospitals, is searching frantically amongst the chaos and the rubble. All around police sirens and ambulances are screaming but Simon does not hear. He is out of breath because he has been running, and he is distraught. But who is he looking for?
To find out we have first to go back thirty years to a small island in the Indian Ocean where a little girl named Alice Fonseka is learning to ride a bicycle on the beach. The island is Sri Lanka, with its community on the brink of civil war. Alice's life is about to change forever. Soon she will have to leave for England, abandoning her beloved grandfather, and accompanied by her mother, Sita, a woman broken by a series of terrible events.
In London, Alice grows into womanhood. Trapped in a loveless marriage, she has a son. Slowly she fulfills her grandfather's prophecy and becomes an artist. Eventually she finds true love. But London in the twenty first century is a mass of migration and suspicion. The war on terror has begun and everyone, even Simon Swann, middle class, rational, medic that he is, will be caught up in this war in the most unexpected and terrible way.
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Swimming in the Monsoon Sea
Shyam Selvadurai
4.3
Nominated for the Governor General's Literary Awards 2005, (Children's Literature, Text)
The setting is Sri Lanka, 1980, and it is the season of monsoons. Fourteen-year-old Amrith is caught up in the life of the cheerful, well-to-do household in which he is being raised by his vibrant Auntie Bundle and kindly Uncle Lucky. He tries not to think of his life “before,” when his doting mother was still alive. Amrith’s holiday plans seem unpromising: he wants to appear in his school’s production of Othello and he is learning to type at Uncle Lucky’s tropical fish business. Then, like an unexpected monsoon, his cousin arrives from Canada and Amrith’s ordered life is storm-tossed. He finds himself falling in love with the Canadian boy. Othello, with its powerful theme of disastrous jealousy, is the backdrop to the drama in which Amrith finds himself immersed.
Shyam Selvadurai’s brilliant novels, Funny Boy and Cinnamon Gardens, have garnered him international acclaim. In this, his first young adult novel, he explores first love with clarity, humor, and compassion.
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38
Monkfish Moon
Romesh Gunesekera
4.3
In these stories, the acclaimed author of the Reef describes his homeland of Sri Lanka—a kind of paradise in which a sudden moment of silence in a city is cause for fear, where civil war disrupts a marriage thousands of miles away, and where the building up of home, relationships, and lives is more often than not swiftly and violently brought down. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
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Bone China
Roma Tearne
4.3
An epic novel of love, loss and a family uprooted, set in the contrasting landscapes of war-torn Sri Lanka and immigrant London. Grace de Silva, wife of the shiftless but charming Aloysius, has five children and a crumbling marriage. Her eldest son, Jacob, wants desperately to go to England. Thornton, the most beautiful of all the children and his mother's favourite, dreams of becoming a poet. Alicia wants to be a concert pianist. Only Frieda has no ambition, other than to remain close to her family. But civil unrest is stirring in Sri Lanka and Christopher, the youngest and the rebel of the family, is soon caught up in the tragedy that follows. As the decade unfolds against a backdrop of increasing ethnic violence, Grace watches helplessly as the life she knows begins to crumble. Slowly, this once happy family is torn apart as four of her children each make the decision to leave their home. In London, the de Silvas are all caught in a clash between East and West ...
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40
Half Gods
Akil Kumarasamy
4.2
A startlingly beautiful debut, Half Gods brings together the exiled, the disappeared, the seekers. Following the fractured origins and destines of two brothers named after demigods from the ancient epic the Mahabharata, we meet a family struggling with the reverberations of the past in their lives. These ten interlinked stories redraw the map of our world in surprising ways: following an act of violence, a baby girl is renamed after a Hindu goddess but raised as a Muslim; a lonely butcher from Angola finds solace in a family of refugees in New Jersey; a gentle entomologist, in Sri Lanka, discovers unexpected reserves of courage while searching for his missing son.
By turns heartbreaking and fiercely inventive, Half Gods reveals with sharp clarity the ways that parents, children, and friends act as unknowing mirrors to each other, revealing in their all-too human weaknesses, hopes, and sorrows a connection to the divine.
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41
Ghost Train to the Eastern Star
Paul Therou
4.2
National Bestseller
In Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Theroux recreates an epic journey he took thirty years ago, a giant loop by train (mostly) through Eastern Europe, Turkey, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, China, Japan, and Siberia. In short, he traverses all of Asia top to bottom, and end to end. In the three decades since he first travelled this route, Asia has undergone phenomenal change. The Soviet Union has collapsed, China has risen, India booms, Burma slowly smothers, and Vietnam prospers despite the havoc unleashed upon it the last time Theroux passed through. He witnesses all this and so much more in a 25,000 mile journey, travelling as the locals do, by train, car, bus, and foot.
His odyssey takes him from Eastern Europe, still hungover from Communism, through tense but thriving Turkey, into the Caucasus, where Georgia limps back toward feudalism while its neighbour Azerbaijan revels in oil-driven capitalism. As he penetrates deeper into Asia’s heart, his encounters take on an otherworldly cast. The two chapters that follow show us Turkmenistan, a profoundly isolated society at the mercy of an almost comically egotistical dictator, and Uzbekistan, a ruthless authoritarian state. From there, he retraces his steps through India, Mayanmar, China, and Japan, providing his penetrating observations on the changes these countries have undergone.
Brilliant, caustic, and totally addictive, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is Theroux at his very best.
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42
The Elephant Gates: Vibrant Reflections of Life, Family, and Tradition in Sri Lanka
Chamalee Weeratunge
4.2
The Elephant Gates is a recollection of the simple pleasures of childhood caught up in an inevitable tide of change. With vivid and touching detail, it recalls Weeratunge’s life, home, and family in her native village of Depanama on the island of Sri Lanka.
Weeratunge’s memories reveal a yearning for past times when traditions like celebrating the New Year or a Full Moon Day, still endured. Her poignant reminiscences evoke compassion for a misunderstood vagrant and a captive elephant, and curiosity for the appearance of the Pot-Bellied Merchant and Uncle Robert the Capitalist. She celebrates everyday heroes like the Coconut-Plucker, the Cook of Sweet Meats, and the Buffalo-Herdsman. With delicate diplomacy, cultural change is signaled by events such as the abandoning of the firewood hearth and the arrival of the television.
These intricately woven stories are told with an engaging voice and graceful prose. Time, as it often does, has softened the edges and imparted a gentle humor in each vignette, whether in describing a rice harvest or sharing a game of checkers on the veranda. Ultimately, The Elephant Gates reaffirms our innate affinity for home, family, and the need to belong.
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The Age of Kali: Indian Travels & Encounters
William Dalrymple
4.2
William Dalrymple has proved himself to be one of the most perceptive and enjoyable travel writers of the 1990s. His first book, In Xanadu, became an instant backpacker's classic, winning a stream of literary prizes. City of Djinns and From the Holy Mountain soon followed, to universal critical praise. Yet it is India that Dalrymple continues to return to in his travels, and his fourth book, The Age of Kali, is his most reflective book to date.
The result of 10 year's living and traveling throughout the Indian subcontinent, The Age of Kali emerges from Dalrymple's uneasy sense that the region is slipping into the most fearsome of all epochs in ancient Hindu cosmology: "the Kali Yug, the Age of Kali, the lowest possible throw, an epoch of strife, corruption, darkness, and disintegration." "The brilliance of this book lies in its refusal to reflect any cultural pessimism. Dalrymple's love for the subcontinent, and his feel for its diverse cultural identity, comes across in every page, which makes its chronicles of political corruption, ethnic violence, and social disintegration all the more poignant. The scope of the book is particularly impressive, from the vivid opening chapters portraying the lawless caste violence of Bihar, to interviews with the drug barons on the North-West Frontier, and Dalrymple's extraordinary encounter with the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Some of the most fascinating sections of the book are Dalrymple's interviews with Imran Khan and Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, which read like nonfiction companion pieces to Salman Rushdie's bitterly satirical Shame. The Age of Kali is a dark, disturbing book that takes the pulse of a continent facing some tough questions. --Jerry Brotton, Amazon.co.uk
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44
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
DAVID GRANN
4.2
A grand mystery reaching back centuries. A sensational disappearance that made headlines around the world. A quest for truth that leads to death, madness or disappearance for those who seek to solve it. The Lost City of Z is a blockbuster adventure narrative about what lies beneath the impenetrable jungle canopy of the Amazon.
After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, New Yorker writer David Grann set out to solve "the greatest exploration mystery of the 20th century": What happened to the British explorer Percy Fawcett & his quest for the Lost City of Z?
In 1925, Fawcett ventured into the Amazon to find an ancient civilization, hoping to make one of the most important discoveries in history. For centuries Europeans believed the world's largest jungle concealed the glittering kingdom of El Dorado. Thousands had died looking for it, leaving many scientists convinced that the Amazon was truly inimical to humans. But Fawcett, whose daring expeditions inspired Conan Doyle's The Lost World, had spent years building his scientific case. Captivating the imagination of millions round the globe, Fawcett embarked with his 21-year-old son, determined to prove that this ancient civilisation--which he dubbed Z--existed. Then his expedition vanished. Fawcett's fate, & the tantalizing clues he left behind about Z, became an obsession for hundreds who followed him into the uncharted wilderness.
For decades scientists & adventurers have searched for evidence of Fawcett's party & the lost City of Z. Countless have perished, been captured by tribes or gone mad. As Grann delved ever deeper into the mystery surrounding Fawcett's quest, & the greater mystery of what lies within the Amazon, he found himself, like the generations who preceded him, being irresistibly drawn into the jungle's green hell. His quest for the truth & discoveries about Fawcett's fate & Z form the heart of this complexly enthralling narrative.
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Recommended by The Jupiter Girl.
The Jupiter Girl
The Lost City of Z (I have the book and it remains unread in Australia) is an odd little film, it's really more about the father-son relationship rather than what motivates Fawcett. It's a slow and dreamy film about a dreamer searching for some great achievement in his life [source]
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45
Return to Sri Lanka: Travels in a Paradoxical Land
Razeen Sally
4.2
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46
Noontide Toll: Stories
Romesh Gunesekera
4.2
The driver’s job is to stay in control behind the wheel and that is all. The past is what you leave as you go. There is nothing more to it.
Vasantha retired early, bought himself a van with his savings, and now works as a driver for hire. As he drives through Sri Lanka, carrying aid workers, businessmen, and families and meeting lonely soldiers and eager hoteliers, he engages them with self-deprecating wit and folksy wisdom—and reveals for us their uncertain lives.
On his journey from the army camps in northern Jaffna to the moonlit ramparts of Galle, in the south, Vasantha begins to discover the depth of the problems of the past—his own and his country’s—and the promise the future might hold.
From the writer praised by The Guardian for the “vivid originality” of his vision, here is a wonderful collection—perceptive, somber, finely tuned—that draws a potent portrait of postwar Sri Lanka and the ghosts of civil war.
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Elly Rose in Sri Lanka
Maggie O'Hara
4.2
Elly Rose and her mother fly from Sydney, Australia to Sri Lanka, to attend the famous Esala Perahera festival, and to meet Shalinka and his daughter Aruni. When a baby elephant is lost, Elly Rose knows she must help find its family. It's a race against time. What will they do when a cheeky monkey steals their map? Will they find the elephants family or will they get caught in the monsoon rains?
An educational book about culture, friendship and being selfless. This book embraces travel and adventure and explores different cultures and traditions in Sri Lanka. An Australian and a Sri Lankan girl go on an adventure together to find the baby elephants family. Together they learn a little more about each other and their different cultures.
The beautiful vibrant watercolour illustrations take the reader on a journey of mystery, combining both real photos and watercolours to create the unmistakable style that Maggie O'Hara brings to the Elly Rose series of travel books.
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48
Warlight
Michael Ondaatje
4.2
It is 1945, and London is still reeling from years of war. Fourteen-year-old Nathaniel and his older sister, Rachel, seemingly abandoned by their parents, have been left in the care of an enigmatic figure they call The Moth. They suspect he may be a criminal and grow both more convinced and less concerned as they come to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women with a shared history, all of whom seem determined now to protect and educate (in rather unusual ways) the siblings. But are they really what and who they claim to be? And how should Nathaniel and Rachel feel when their mother returns without their father after months of silence--explaining nothing, excusing nothing? A dozen years later, Nathaniel begins to uncover all he didn't know or understand during that time, and it is this journey--through reality, recollection, and imagi-nation--that is told in this magnificent novel.
As 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing a favorite tradition of mine and sharing my year-end lists. It gives me a moment to pause and reflect on the year through the books I found most thought-provoking, inspiring, or just plain loved. It also gives me a chance to highlight talented authors – some who are household names and others who you may not have heard of before. Here’s my best of 2018 list. [source]
Katharine Grant
Warlight is a book of mysteries shrouded in detail: life in the nether regions of a smart hotel; the watery byways of East London down which greyhounds are smuggled. And matching the mysteries are the people: the Moth, the Darter; Marsh Felon. It’s a book to read and re-read. [source]
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49
Angel of the Street Dogs
Emma Donnan
4.2
The selfless young vet dubbed the "angel of the street dogs" by the media. In 2014 and in her mid-twenties, Janey Lowes had been a vet for just two years when she left her home in County Durham and went travelling. Visiting Sri Lanka, she was horrified to see the state of so many of the island’s dogs, in particular the three million strays. Over 5,000 miles from home, Janey decided there and then that she was going to move to the island indefinitely and do everything within her power to help them. She raised £10,000 to get started, setting up a charity called WECare Worldwide, and began work.
Frightened, determined and excited all at the same time, she found a local who was willing to work with her and began scouring the streets for dogs in need. Some she patched up as best she could at the roadside, others she brought back and treated in a make-shift surgery she had cobbled together in her new home. With very little equipment, she and her small team came up with new and ingenious ways to treat the animals.
In this highly inspiring and heartfelt book full of challenges and adventure, Janey introduces us to her world and the tireless work she carries out. As she says, ‘I feel as though all these dogs are my dogs and I have a responsibility to them.’ In it, we meet many of the colourful characters who have come to offer help, along with innumerable street dogs who have suffered all sorts of trauma and injury, only to be scooped up by Janey and her team and saved.
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Recommended by Ben Fogle.
Ben Fogle
This book is AMAZING https://t.co/8AjuuzH1Xo [source]
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50
Marriage of a Thousand Lies
SJ Sindu
4.2
Lucky and her husband, Krishna, are gay. They present an illusion of marital bliss to their conservative Sri Lankan–American families, while each dates on the side. It’s not ideal, but for Lucky, it seems to be working. She goes out dancing, she drinks a bit, she makes ends meet by doing digital art on commission. But when Lucky’s grandmother has a nasty fall, Lucky returns to her childhood home and unexpectedly reconnects with her former best friend and first lover, Nisha, who is preparing for her own arranged wedding with a man she’s never met.
As the connection between the two women is rekindled, Lucky tries to save Nisha from entering a marriage based on a lie. But does Nisha really want to be saved? And after a decade’s worth of lying, can Lucky break free of her own circumstances and build a new life? Is she willing to walk away from all that she values about her parents and community to live in a new truth? As Lucky—an outsider no matter what choices she makes—is pushed to the breaking point, Marriage of a Thousand Lies offers a vivid exploration of a life lived at a complex intersection of race, sexuality, and nationality. The result is a profoundly American debut novel shot through with humor and loss, a story of love, family, and the truths that define us all.
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51
The Fountains of Paradise
Arthur C. Clarke
4.2
This Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novel is reissued in this trade paperback edition. Vannemar Morgan's dream of linking Earth with the stars requires a 24,000-mile-high space elevator. But first he must solve a million technical, political, and economic problems while allaying the wrath of God. Includes a new introduction by the author.
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52
Suncatcher
Romesh Gunesekera
4.2
A coming-of-age story in Sixties Sri Lanka by the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Reef
1964. Ceylon is on the brink of change. But Kairo is at a loose end. School is closed, the government is in disarray, the press is under threat and the religious right are flexing their muscles. Kairo’s hard-working mother blows off steam at her cha-cha-cha classes; his Trotskyite father grumbles over the state of the nation between his secret flutters on horseraces in faraway England. All Kairo wants to do is hide in his room and flick over second-hand westerns and superhero comics, or escape on his bicycle and daydream. Then he meets the magnetic teenage Jay, and his whole world is turned inside out.
A budding naturalist and a born rebel, Jay keeps fish and traps birds for an aviary he is building in the garden of his grand home. The adults in Jay's life have no say in what he does or where he goes: he holds his beautiful, fragile mother in contempt, and his wealthy father seems fuelled by anger. But his Uncle Elvin, suave and worldly, is his encourager. As Jay guides him from the realm of make believe into one of hunting-guns and fast cars and introduces him to a girl — Niromi — Kairo begins to understand the price of privilege and embarks on a journey of devastating consequence.
Taut and luminous, graceful and wild, Suncatcher is a poignant coming-of-age novel about difficult friendships and sudden awakenings. Mesmerizingly it charts the loss of innocence and our recurring search for love — or consolation — bringing these extraordinary lives into our own.
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53
Trouble in Nuala (The Inspector de Silva Mysteries #1)
Harriet Stee
4.2
When Inspector Shanti de Silva moves with his English wife Jane to his new post in the sleepy hill town of Nuala he anticipates a more restful life than police work in the big city entails. However an arrogant plantation owner with a lonely wife, a crusading lawyer, and a death in suspicious circumstances present him with a riddle that he will need all his experience to solve. Set on the exotic island of Ceylon in the 1930s, Trouble in Nuala is an entertaining and relaxing mystery spiced with humour and a colourful cast of characters.
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54
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
Simon Winchester
4.2
The Professor and the Madman, masterfully researched and eloquently written, is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary -- and literary history. The compilation of the OED, begun in 1857, was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray, discovered that one man, Dr. W. C. Minor, had submitted more than ten thousand. When the committee insisted on honoring him, a shocking truth came to light: Dr. Minor, an American Civil War veteran, was also an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.
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Recommended by Peter Gilliver.
Peter Gilliver
W.C. Minor was a member of the public, but he just happened to be a murderer who was banged up in Broadmoor. [source]
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Love Marriage
V. V. Ganeshananthan
4.2
In this globe-scattered Sri Lankan family, we speak of only two kinds of marriage. The first is the Arranged Marriage. The second is the Love Marriage. In reality, there is a whole spectrum in between, but most of us spend years running away from the first toward the second. [p. 3]
The daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants who left their collapsing country and married in America, Yalini finds herself caught between the traditions of her ancestors and the lure of her own modern world. But when she is summoned to Toronto to help care for her dying uncle, Kumaran, a former member of the militant Tamil Tigers, Yalini is forced to see that violence is not a relic of the Sri Lankan past, but very much a part of her Western present.
While Kumaran’s loved ones gather around him to say goodbye, Yalini traces her family’s roots–and the conflicts facing them as ethnic Tamils–through a series of marriages. Now, as Kumaran’s death and his daughter’s politically motivated nuptials edge closer, Yalini must decide where she stands.
Lyrical and innovative, V. V. Ganeshananthan’s novel brilliantly unfolds how generations of struggle both form and fractures families.
Praise for Love Marriage “A beautiful first novel. This intricately woven tale, with its universal themes of love and estrangement, presents an exciting new voice in American literature.” –Yiyun Li, author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
“Complex and moving . . . an impressive debut.” –Daniel Alarcón, author of Lost City Radio
“V. V. Ganeshananthan has given us a riveting picture of the intersections of love and war that shape us all. A debut of incredible passion and wisdom.” –Rebecca Johns, author of Icebergs
“At its best and simplest, Ganeshananthan can be profoundly moving. She captures the pain of exile poignantly.” --The San Francisco Chronicle “Ganeshananthan has created a slow-burning and beautifully written debut in Love Marriage. It is an evocative examination of Sri Lankan cultural mores, and the way one family is affected by love and war” — The Financial Times “Poignant and authentic…. Insight gained into Toronto's Tamil community is a welcome bonus in this gem of a book by a young writer who is sure to present more thought-provoking, entertaining prose in the future.” --The Toronto Star “The book is at times witty and always beautifully written” — The Irish Times "Innovative….this is an ambitious family drama about an underreported part of the world, filled with well-shaded characters [and] gorgeous flourish…Buy it." -- New York Magazine
"As if she were stringing a necklace of bright beads, the author relates the stories of Yalini's Sri Lankan forebears in lapidary folkloric narratives…What she does here, she does quite affectingly." -- The Boston Globe
"In spare, lyrical prose, V.V. Ganeshananthan's debut novel tells the story of two Sri Lankan Tamil families over four generations who, despite civil war and displacement, are irrevocably joined by marriage and tradition….Powerful." -- Ms. Magazine
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56
Fortune Favors The Brave: An Extraordinary Memoir
Kiri Westby
4.2
From inside an interrogation session with the Chinese Secret Police, a young American activist recounts her path into global human rights work—exploring critical lessons on privilege and compassion in the context of war and extreme suffering.
When I was arrested by the Chinese military for launching a historic Tibetan Freedom protest, I knew every trial and lesson had been worth it—even if it meant facing a life in prison.
After a childhood infused with esoteric Buddhist teachings, I was forged into a global activist through years of witnessing and collaborating in the dissent of women on the front lines of war. From villages in Nepal, to refugee camps in The Democratic Republic of Congo, to the streets of Bogota, Colombia, my initiation into human rights activism was raw and transformative. The bravery of those women bolstered me in my darkest hours of interrogation and torture by the Chinese Police, and it guides me now to share my true story—no matter the repercussions. This is not a tale the Chinese government wants told.
During my years working in war zones, I often wondered if I’d have the courage to stand up to tyranny, to lay my life on the line to confront undeniable persecution.
In 2007—on the slopes of Mt. Everest—I found out.
Take a literary journey with me as I reveal the bumpy road I took to becoming my bravest self—learning to leverage a life of advantage, find a place for my own joy, and cultivate the courage needed to play a distinct role in history.
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57
The Elephant Keeper's Daughter
Julia Drosten and Deborah Langto
4.1
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58
The ABCs of Sri Lanka
Siddhartha Padmanabha
4.1
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59
DK Eyewitness Travel Guide Sri Lanka
DK Eyewitness
4.1
DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Sri Lanka is your in-depth guide to the very best of this beautiful and diverse country.
Explore Sri Lanka region-by-region, from Colombo and the beaches on its idyllic west coast to Kandy and the Hill Country to Jaffna and the north. Visit Yala National Park to see wildlife, play a game of cricket, and take a pilgrimage to Adam's Peak.
Discover DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Sri Lanka.
+ Detailed itineraries and "don't-miss" destination highlights at a glance. + Illustrated cutaway 3-D drawings of important sights. + Floor plans and guided visitor information for major museums. + Guided walking tours, local drink and dining specialties to try, things to do, and places to eat, drink, and shop by area. + Area maps marked with sights. + Detailed city maps include street finder indexes for easy navigation. + Insights into history and culture to help you understand the stories behind the sights. + Hotel and restaurant listings highlight DK Choice special recommendations.
With hundreds of full-color photographs, hand-drawn illustrations, and custom maps that illuminate every page, DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Sri Lanka truly shows you this country as no one else can.
Series Overview: For more than two decades, DK Eyewitness Travel Guides have helped travelers experience the world through the history, art, architecture, and culture of their destinations. Expert travel writers and researchers provide independent editorial advice, recommendations, and reviews. With guidebooks to hundreds of places around the globe available in print and digital formats, DK Eyewitness Travel Guides show travelers how they can discover more.
DK Eyewitness Travel Guides: the most maps, photographs, and illustrations of any guide.
Reviews:
"Known... for its four-color maps, photos and illustrations, the [DK] Eyewitness Guides are extremely user-friendly for travelers who want their information delivered in a concise, visual way." - Chicago Tribune
"The best option... Color photos, maps, and diagrams bring the place to life." - The Philadelphia Inquirer
Awards:
Wanderlust Travel Awards 2009 - 2016
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Sri Lanka's Secrets: How the Rajapaksa Regime Gets Away with Murder
Trevor Grant, Geoffrey Robertson
4.1
As the civil war in Sri Lanka drew to its bloody end in 2009 the government of this island nation removed its protection from UN officials and employees, who, along with other international observers, were forced to leave the conflict zone. President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his inner circle wanted, it seemed, a war without witness.
The end result was the deliberate slaughter of an estimated 70,000 innocent civilians. However, many survivors, and some who died, were able to capture on camera the horrifying conclusion to the war and the cruel deprivations of the internment camps that followed. Today, through their images and testimony, Rajapaksa stands accused of war crimes.
In Sri Lanka’s Secrets experienced journalist Trevor Grant presents the shocking story of the final days of this war, alongside the photographs and eye-witness accounts of many Tamils, including Maravan, a social worker who fled to Australia by boat after being tortured by soldiers seeking his folio of photographs.
Grant also details the continuing torture and abuse of Tamils in Sri Lanka, and some national governments’ ongoing support for a regime that has abandoned any pretense of democracy. Foremost among these enthusiastic supporters has been the Government of Australia, cynically preoccupied with ‘stopping the boats’ fleeing Sri Lankan state terror. At any cost.
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Amazon Reviews, 1 of 2:
(5 stars) "Every page is a revelation"
By George on October 7, 2014
Before I commence with my review I feel I should state that my knowledge of the Sri Lanka was limited. In 240 pages author succeeds in taking us through what happened in Sri Lanka. The strange thing is that it is almost unknown. People know so much more about Gaza and Bosnia but not about Sri Lanka. The lives of innocent 70,000 Tamils appear worth less than the lives of other humans in the world. Well written. Every page is a revelation. I whole-heartedly recommend this book to anyone interested of Sri Lanka.
=> 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
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Amazon Reviews, 2 of 2:
(4 stars) "Brilliant - MUST read!"
By Lotus on October 25, 2014
Whatever your interest Journalism, Peace-Studies, Ethnic Conflict, international relations, Humanity, Human Rights, this is a MUST read. Quite resourceful.
You may ask, how come we didn't hear the full story? Well, I believe lobbying is fine, when it's ethical. But unethical, no.
See, after 7 lobby firms:
Oct 23 2014, Megan R. Wilson, theHill.com Sri Lanka hires up in Washington amid war crimes probe "The government of Sri Lanka has hired its eighth Washington firm this year as it awaits the results of a United Nations human rights investigation into alleged war crimes ..."
If you'd rather see independent reviews, here are a few:
Oct 25 2014, Martin Flanagan, The Sydney Morning Herald Our eyes are blind to Tamil torture "For the book, Grant interviewed 50 Tamil refugees. He obtained access to confidential medical reports from Sri Lankan and Australian doctors which backed up their claims ..."
Oct 23 2014, Beate Arnestad, Journalists for democracy in Sri Lanka Sri Lanka's Secrets: How the Rajapaksa regime gets away with murder "Sri Lanka’s secrets solely refers to the systematic and unspeakable war crimes as well as the ongoing genocide committed by the current Rajapaksa regime towards its ethnic Tamil population.
These are horrible crimes that have been committed by an elected government. This leaves the reader totally perplexed and shocked as to why and how such serious crimes can be kept in the dark ..."
Also, a must read to get perspective, is a book written by a Human Rights activist from New Zealand, who volunteered during the 'cease-fire': A Fleeting Moment in My Country: The Last Years of the Ltte de-Facto State, N Malathy, Radha d'Souza
On twitter, see #SriLanka
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The Broken Palmyra - The Tamil Crisis in Sri Lanka, An Inside Account
Rajan Hoole, Daya Somasundaram, et al.
4.1
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62
Consensual Genocide
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
4.1
This long-awaited first collection of poetry by queer Sri Lankan writer and spoken-word artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is full of the stories we've been waiting for. Tracing bloodlines from Sri Lanka's civil wars to Brooklyn and Toronto streets, these fierce poems are full of heart and guts, telling raw truths about brown girl border crossings before and after 9/11, surviving abuse, mixed-race journeys and high femme rebellions. Consensual Genocide celebrates our survival and marks our rebel memories into history.
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The Beach at Galle Road: Stories from Sri Lanka
Joanna Luloff
4.1
When rumors of civil war between the ruling Sinhalese and the Tamils in the northern sector of Sri Lanka reach those who live in the south, somehow it seems not to be happening in their own country. At least not until Janaki’s sister, Lakshmi—now a refugee whose husband, a Tamil, has disappeared—comes back to live with her family. And when Sam, an American Peace Corps worker who boards with Janaki’s family, falls in love with one of his students, a young girl from the north, he, too, becomes acutely aware of the dangers that exist for any- one who gets drawn into the conflict, however marginally.
Skillfully weaving together the stories of these and other intersecting lives, The Beach at Galle Road explores themes of memory and identity amid the consequences of the Sri Lankan civil war. From different points of view, across generations and geographies, it pits the destructive power of war against the resilient power of family, individual will, and the act of storytelling itself.
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The Sweet and Simple Kind
Yasmine Gooneratne
4.1
The Sweet and Simple Kind is an engrossing and dramatic family saga set against the backdrop of Ceylon’s turbulent evolution into Sri Lanka.
Resonant in its social insights and beautifully written, The Sweet and Simple Kind offers a richly imagined world of love, political chicanery and family turmoil in the newly independent Sri Lanka of the 1950s and 60s. As an intensely political family attempts to balance language with religion, and privilege with equity, two smart, westernised young women — cousins Tsunami and Latha — pursue their own personal freedoms. The Sweet and Simple Kind enchants us with its combination of authenticity, humour and passion.
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The Other One: Stories
Hasanthika Sirisena
4.1
Set in Sri Lanka and America, the ten short stories in this debut collection feature characters struggling to contend with the brutality of a decades-long civil war while also seeking security, love, and hope. The characters are students, accountants, soldiers, servants. They are immigrants and strivers. They are each forced to make sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, choices. What they share, despite what they've endured, is the sustaining power of human connection.
An excerpt from the book:
"All I want to know is when you are coming? When are you bringing my sons, my family?"
She watched as a gecko, tinier than normal, skittered across the far wall. It disappeared into a small crack. The room was very hot, and she hadn't turned on the ceiling fan so that the family could save a little money. She took a handkerchief from her nightstand and wiped the beads of sweat from her forehead and the back of her neck.
"I can't leave malli alone here. He's making progress but -- "
"It will be for two years only. Then you can sponsor him."
"The lawyer says it's not so easy."
"He's a grown man. Let the government take him. The government did this to malli. Let the government pay the price for his care."
Even though there was no chance that her brother Ranjith could hear her, Anoja dropped her voice. "Malli is all alone here. He has nobody but aiya and me."
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Not Quite Paradise: An American Sojourn in Sri Lanka
Adele Barker
4.1
A chronicle of life on the resplendent island, combining the immediacy of memoir with the vividness of travelogue and reportage Adele Barker and her son, Noah, settled into the central highlands of Sri Lanka for an eighteen-month sojourn, immersing themselves in the customs, cultures, and landscapes of the island—its elephants, birds, and monkeys; its hot curries and sweet mangoes; the cacophony of its markets; the resonant evening chants from its temples. They hear stories of the island’s colorful past and its twenty-five-year civil war between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil Tigers. When, having returned home to Tucson, Barker awakes on December 26, 2004, to see televised images of the island’s southern shore disappearing into the ocean, she decides she must go back. Traveling from the southernmost coasts to the farthest outposts of the Tamil north, she witnesses the ravages of the tsunami that killed forty-eight thousand Sri Lankans in the space of twenty minutes, and reports from the ground on the triumphs and failures of relief efforts. Combining the immediacy of memoir and the vividness of travelogue with the insight of the best reportage, Not Quite Paradise chronicles life in a place few have ever visited.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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When the Rain Comes
Alma Fullerton, Kim La Fave
4.1
It is time to plant the rice crop in Malini's Sri Lankan community, and the little girl is both excited and nervous to help for the first time. What if she does it wrong? Will she be responsible if the crop fails? When the oxcart rumbles in loaded with seedlings, she reluctantly agrees to watch the big, imposing animal while the driver takes a break. Suddenly, the skies go dark with monsoon rain. A flash flood pours down the road, separating Malini from the driver and her family. They are shouting for her to run for higher ground, but what about the rice? Summoning up courage she never dreamed she possessed, Malini resolves to save ox, cart, and seedlings, no matter what it takes. Award-winning author Alma Fullerton tells Malini's story in expressive free verse that vibrates with emotion and energy. The moods of Sri Lanka's rainy season come alive as Kim La Fave, illustrator of the award-winning Shin Chi's Canoe, uses a fresh style that is both contemporary and impressionistic to depict the courage of one little girl facing the power of a flash flood.
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Destination Earth- A New Philosophy of Travel by a World-Traveler
Nicos Hadjicostis
4.1
More a guide to travel than a travel guide, Destination Earth transforms how you view travel and its relation to Life. It also provides a philosophical framework for embarking on more meaningful and purposeful travels, whether it is an around the world journey, or an exploration of a region, or even a city. Destination Earth is the product of the author's unique 6.5-year continuous around the world journey, during which he visited 70 countries on 6 continents and treated the world as if it were a single destination. From Chile and Argentina to Thailand and Japan, Destination Earth explores the delicate and invisible interconnections of nations and countries, people and cultures, and delves deep into all aspects of travel and its transformational power:
· Why long-term and world travel is the ultimate university · How to create a wise-line of travel through any region · How to go about capturing the Soul of a country · How to deal with the unpleasant realities of the world while on the road · Balance the relationship between travel planning and spontaneity · How a Travel-Journey is related to our Life's-Journey · Practical advice on how to plan the exploration of regions and countries · 23 inspiring travel stories from the author's journey that augment the main text · 60 color photos from various places around the world
Ideas, experiences, stories and photographs are interwoven into a newly created Philosophy of Travel that is practical and easy to read.
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The Hamilton Case
Michelle de Kretser
4.1
A flamboyant beauty who once partied with the Prince of Wales and who now, in her seventh decade, has "gone native" in a Ceylonese jungle. A proud, Oxford-educated lawyer who unwittingly seals his own professional fate when he dares to solve the sensational Hamilton murder case that has rocked the upper echelons of local society. A young woman who retreats from her family and the world after her infant brother is found suffocated in his crib. These are among the linked lives compellingly portrayed in a novel everywhere hailed for its dazzling grace and savage wit -- a spellbinding tale of family and duty, of legacy and identity, a novel that brilliantly probes the ultimate mystery of what makes us who we are.
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The Teardrop Island: Following Victorian Footsteps Across Sri Lanka
Cherry Briggs
4.1
After discovering the travel writings of a Victorian explorer and writer, Cherry Briggs decides to retrace his footsteps across the island of Ceylon—now known as the recently war-torn, tsunami-effected Sri Lanka
Mr Fernando led me into a dark room that was lined with book-cases and smelled of leather and damp. The polished, concrete floor of the library was covered with white jasmine flowers that had blown through the windows during the storm. He began to select from the shelves a collection of disintegrating books. ‘If you are going to read any of them, it should really be this one,’ he said as he passed me two thick volumes, embossed with gold lettering and spotted with damp. The work was simply called Ceylon and was written by an Irishman named Sir James Emerson Tennent, who had been sent to the island in 1845 by Her Majesty’s Government.
The Teardrop Island follows in the footsteps of the eccentric Victorian James Emerson Tennent, along a route which takes Cherry to pilgrimage trails, into tea estates and rural regions inhabited by indigenous tribes, as well as through restricted areas of the former warzone, delving under the surface of the contemporary culture via cricket matches and fortune tellers.
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A History of Sri Lanka
K. M. De Silva
4.1
The standard modern history.
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72
Rituals. Killers. Wars. & Sex.: Tibet, India, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka & New York
Richard S. Ehrlich
4.1
Richard S. Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist from San Francisco, California, reporting news from Asia since 1978 and winner of Columbia University's Foreign Correspondent's Award. This book elaborates on his published dispatches from Tibet, India, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and New York. Fragments of people appear, their distant voices mixing with chaotic and often terrible events. Slices start at random moments and end in bleak locations. Many of these transcribed handwritten notes, impressions and exclusive interviews have never appeared in print until now. CHAPTER 1 ~ RITUALS ~ Sky Funeral Vultures in Tibet / The Dalai Lama & the Dead / Holy Sadhus in India & Nepal / Calcutta's Dom Caste Undertakers / CHAPTER 2 ~ KILLERS ~ Jampa Phuntsok & Tibet's Armed Rebellion / Tony "Poe" Poshepny, CIA in Laos / James "Mule" Parker, CIA in Vietnam / International "Bikini Killer" Charles Sobhraj / India's "Bandit Queen" Phoolan Devi / Jonathan "Jack" Idema in Kabul / CHAPTER 3 ~ WARS ~ Americans, Soviets & Mujahideen in Afghanistan / India's Kashmir / The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam/ CHAPTER 4 ~ SEX ~ Peri, a New York Stripper /Michelle, in Peepland on 42nd Street
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73
A Little Dust on the Eyes
Minoli Salgado
4.1
It is the late 1980s in southern Sri Lanka and Bradley Sirisena’s father is abducted and tortured during the violent struggle for power between the state and local insurgents. Savi, a Sri Lankan research student long settled in the UK, has lost her way in both her thesis and her life, when she receives a wedding invitation from the uncle she would rather ignore. Meanwhile in a coastal fort in Sri Lanka, her cousin Renu continues to try to uncover the secret of Bradley’s father’s disappearance as she works with the wives and widows of the disappeared. Reunited on Savi’s return to Sri Lanka, the cousins are compelled to confront truths that put them into direct conflict in their understanding of both the past and themselves. As the story draws to its inevitable end, a tsunami strikes and carries them all into a future that promises to be even more disturbing than the past. The novel is a haunting evocation of intersecting lives and parallel times that draws upon real historical events. Linking the personal with the political, it carries readers into the shifting landscape of memory where competing versions of the truth coexist. In this richly textured book, myth and magic merge, as the bustle of a seaside city in England gives way to the unreal calm of coastal communities in southern Sri Lanka where thousands disappeared without trace.
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74
At Home in the World: Reflections on Belonging While Wandering the Globe
Tsh Oxenreider
4.1
As Tsh Oxenreider, author of Notes From a Blue Bike, chronicles her family’s adventure around the world. Americans Tsh and Kyle met and married in Kosovo. They lived as expats for most of a decade. They’ve been back in the States—now with three kids under ten—for four years, and while home is nice, they are filled with wanderlust and long to answer the call, so a trip—a nine-months-long trip—is planned.
At Home in the World follows their journey from China to New Zealand, Ethiopia to England, and more. And all the while Tsh grapples with the concept of home, as she learns what it means to be lost—yet at home—in the world.
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75
Lives Other than My Own: A Memoir
Emmanuel Carrère
4.1
From the acclaimed Emmanuel Carrère, an act of generous imagination that unflinchingly records devastating loss and, equally vividly, the wealth of human solace that follows in its wake
In Sri Lanka, a tsunami sweeps a child out to sea, her grand-father helpless against the onrushing water. In France, a young woman succumbs to illness, leaving her husband and small children bereft. Present at both events, Emmanuel Carrère sets out to tell the story of two families—shattered and ultimately restored. What he accomplishes is nothing short of a literary miracle: a heartrending narrative of endless love, a meditation on courage and decency in the face of adversity, an intimate and reverent look at the extraordinary beauty and nobility of ordinary lives.
Precise, sober, and suspenseful, as full of twists and turns as any novel, Lives Other Than My Own confronts terrifying catastrophes to illuminate the astonishing richness of human connection: a grandfather who thought he had found paradise—too soon—and now devotes himself to helping his neighbors rebuild their village; a husband so in love with his ailing wife that he carries her in his arms like a knight does his princess; and finally, Carrère himself, longtime chronicler of the tormented self, who unexpectedly finds consolation and even joy as he immerses himself in the lives of others.
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Vanni: A Family's Struggle Through the Sri Lankan Conflict
Benjamin Dix
4.1
In the tradition of Maus, Persepolis, Palestine, and The Breadwinner, Vanni is a graphic novel documenting the human side of the conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the "Tamil Tigers." Told from the perspective of a single family, it takes readers through the otherwise unimaginable struggles, horrors, and life-changing decisions families and individuals are forced to make when caught up in someone else's war.
Set in Vanni, the northern region of Sri Lanka that was devastated by the civil war, this graphic novel follows the Ramachandran family as they flee their home after the 2004 tsunami and move from one displacement camp to the next, seeking an ever-elusive safe haven and struggling to keep each other alive. Inspired by Benjamin Dix's experience working in Sri Lanka for the United Nations during the war, Vanni draws on more than four years of meticulous research, official reports, and first-hand interviews with refugees. It depicts heroic acts of kindness and horrific acts of violence, memorializing the experiences of the Tamil civilians against the forces that seek to erase their memory.
Elegantly drawn by Lindsay Pollock, this exceptionally moving graphic novel portrays the personal experiences of modern warfare, the process of forced migration, and the struggles of seeking asylum in Europe.
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River of Ink
Paul M M Cooper
4.1
All Asanka knows is poetry. From his humble village beginnings in the great island kingdom of Lanka, he has risen to the prestigious position of court poet and now delights in his life of ease: composing romantic verses for love-struck courtiers, enjoying the confidence of his king and covertly teaching Sarasi, a beautiful and beguiling palace maid, the secrets of his art.
But when Kalinga Magha, a ruthless prince with a formidable army, arrives upon Lanka's shores, Asanka's world is changed beyond imagining. Violent, hubristic and unpredictable, Magha usurps the throne, laying waste to all who stand in his way. Under his terrifying rule, nothing in the city is left untouched and, like many of his fellow citizens, Asanka retreats into the shadows, hoping to pass unnoticed by the tyrant. But it seems his new master is a lover of poetry...
To Asanka's horror, Magha tasks him with the translation of an epic Sanskrit poem, a tale of Gods and nobles, love and revenge, which the king believes will have a civilising effect on his subjects, soothing their discontent and snuffing out the fires of rebellion he suspects are igniting across the island.
Asanka has always believed that poetry makes nothing happen, but as each new chapter he writes is disseminated through the land and lines on the page become cries in the street, his belief and his loyalties are challenged. And, as Magha circles ever closer to the things Asanka treasures most, the poet will discover that true power lies not at the point of a sword, but in the tip of a pen.
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The Flower Boy
Karen Roberts
4.1
The Buckwater family live side-by-side with their Ceylonese staff in a house nestled in the lush hillside tea estates of '30s Ceylon. Premawathi is their cook and housekeeper. She has two beautiful daughters and a son, Chandi, who even at four-years-old is bright, inventive and more mischievous than his young harried mother can sometimes cope with. As the novel opens Elsie Buckwater, an embittered woman, is giving birth to her third baby. Chandi is enchanted by the idea of making an English friend and he christens her Rose-Lizzie after the flowers he loves. But the discontented Elsie imposes a stifling and unhappy atmosphere on the household and forbids Chandi to go near her baby daughter, whom she herself largely ignores. Eventually however she packs her bags and returns to England. Without her, life at the bungalow flourishes.
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Tea and Solidarity: Tamil Women and Work in Postwar Sri Lanka
Mythri Jegathesan, Piya Chatterjee
4.1
Beyond nostalgic tea industry ads romanticizing colonial Ceylon and the impoverished conditions that beleaguer Tamil tea workers are the stories of the women, men, and children who have built their families and lives in line houses on tea plantations since the nineteenth century. The tea industry's economic crisis and Sri Lanka's twenty-six year long civil war have ushered in changes to life and work on the plantations, where family members now migrate from plucking tea to performing domestic work in the capital city of Colombo or farther afield in the Middle East. Using feminist ethnographic methods in research that spans the transitional time between 2008 and 2017, Mythri Jegathesan presents the lived experience of these women and men working in agricultural, migrant, and intimate labor sectors.
In Tea and Solidarity, Jegathesan seeks to expand anthropological understandings of dispossession, drawing attention to the political significance of gender as a key feature in investment and place making in Sri Lanka specifically, and South Asia more broadly. This vivid and engaging ethnography sheds light on an otherwise marginalized and often invisible minority whose labor and collective heritage of dispossession as "coolies" in colonial Ceylon are central to Sri Lanka's global recognition, economic growth, and history as a postcolonial nation.
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80
The Umbrella Thief
Sybil Wettasinghe, Cathy Hirano
4.1
When each of the umbrellas he brings back to his village disappears, Kiri Mama devises a plan to track down the thief.
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81
The Musical Gift: Sonic Generosity in Post-War Sri Lanka
Jim Sykes
4.1
The Musical Gift tells Sri Lanka's music history as a story of giving between humans and nonhumans, and between populations defined by difference. Author Jim Sykes argues that in the recent past, the genres we recognize today as Sri Lanka's esteemed traditional musics were not originally about ethnic or religious identity, but were gifts to gods and people intended to foster protection and/or healing. Noting that the currently assumed link between music and identity helped produce the narratives of ethnic difference that drove Sri Lanka's civil war (1983-2009), Sykes argues that the promotion of connected music histories has a role to play in post-war reconciliation. The Musical Gift includes a study of how NGOs used music to promote reconciliation in Sri Lanka, and it contains a theorization of the relations between musical gifts and commodities. Eschewing a binary between the gift and identity, Sykes claims the world's music history is largely a story of entanglement between both paradigms. Drawing on fieldwork conducted widely across Sri Lanka over a span of eleven years--including the first study of Sinhala Buddhist drumming in English and the first ethnography of music-making in the former warzones of the north and east--this book brings anthropology's canonic literature on "the gift" into music studies, while drawing on anthropology's recent "ontological turn" and "the new materialism" in religious studies.
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82
Birds of Sri Lanka
Deepal Warakagoda, Carol Inskipp, et al.
4.1
With a rich avifauna of more than 350 species that includes 29 endemics, the island of Sri Lanka is one of southern Asia's most popular birding destination.
This new field guide provides full coverage of every species on the Sri Lanka list, including most vagrants, with particular emphasis placed on endemic species and races. Detailed text highlights key identification criteria, along with accurate colour maps. Packed with spectacular and detailed plates by leading bird artists such as Alan Harris, Tim Worfolk and John Cox, Birds of Sri Lanka is the definitive identification tool for the visiting birdwatcher and another majestic addition to the Helm Field Guides series.
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83
ROO, THE LITTLE RED TUK TUK: Introducing World Cultures and Travel through a Picture Book about a Brave and Kind Vehicle for Children age 2 - 6 (Stories from Sri Lanka)
Nadishka Aloysius
4.1
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84
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
Michael Ondaatje
4.1
Alternate Cover Edition can be found here.
Drawing on contemporary accounts, period photographs, dime novels, and his own prodigious fund of empathy and imagination, Michael Ondaatje's visionary novel traces the legendary outlaw's passage across the blasted landscape of 1880 New Mexico and the collective unconscious of his country. The Collected Works of Billy the Kid is a virtuoso synthesis of storytelling, history, and myth by a writer who brings us back to our familiar legends with a renewed sense of wonder.
Sir Edward Feathers has had a brilliant career, from his early days as a lawyer in Southeast Asia, where he earned the nickname Old Filth (FILTH being an acronym for Failed In London Try Hong Kong) to his final working days as a respected judge at the English bar. Yet through it all he has carried with him the wounds of a difficult and emotionally hollow childhood. Now an eighty-year-old widower living in comfortable seclusion in Dorset, Feathers is finally free from the regimen of work and the sentimental scaffolding that has sustained him throughout his life. He slips back into the past with ever mounting frequency and intensity, and on the tide of these vivid, lyrical musings, Feathers approaches a reckoning with his own history. Not all the old filth, it seems, can be cleaned away.
Borrowing from biography and history, Jane Gardam has written a literary masterpiece reminiscent of Rudyard Kipling's Baa Baa, Black Sheep that retraces much of the twentieth century's torrid and momentous history. Feathers' childhood in Malaya during the British Empire's heyday, his schooling in pre-war England, his professional success in Southeast Asia and his return to England toward the end of the millennium, are vantage points from which the reader can observe the march forward of an eventful era and the steady progress of that man, Sir Edward Feathers, Old Filth himself, who embodies the century's fate.
Old Filth was nominated for the 2005 Orange Prize.
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86
In the Skin of a Lion
Michael Ondaatje
4.0
Bristling with intelligence and shimmering with romance, this novel tests the boundary between history and myth. Patrick Lewis arrives in Toronto in the 1920s and earns his living searching for a vanished millionaire and tunneling beneath Lake Ontario. In the course of his adventures, Patrick's life intersects with those of characters who reappear in Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning The English Patient. 256 pp.
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87
Tea Time with Terrorists: A Motorcycle Journey into the Heart of Sri Lanka's Civil War
Mark Stephen Meadows
4.0
Armed with a map, a motorcycle, an infectious sense of humor, and a dim understanding of Sri Lanka’s war, author, artist, and adventurer Mark Stephen Meadows arrives in the country intending to have, as it were, afternoon tea with terrorists. Figuring that the first step to solving a problem is understanding it, he journeys north into the war zone, interviewing terrorists, generals, and heroin dealers along the way. He discovers an island of beauty and abundance ground down by three decades of war. As he travels north through Colombo, Kandy, and the damaged city of Jaffna, Meadows gives his riveting take on the war. Known for child conscription and drawn-out torture methods, he explains, the Tamil Tigers also invented suicide bombing and were the first to lace together terrorists and financiers into international networks of militant uprising. In Sri Lanka, Meadows discovers a deep view into an ancient culture. Along the way, he learns to trap an elephant, weave rope from coconut husks, and cast out devils, and he actually has tea with a few terrorists. This is the inspiring story of his journey and an enlightening meditation on the interconnectedness of globalization, the media, and modern terrorism.
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88
The Sri Lanka Reader: History, Culture, Politics
John Clifford Holt
4.0
The Sri Lanka Reader is a sweeping introduction to the epic history of the island nation located just off the southern tip of India. The island’s recorded history of more than two and a half millennia encompasses waves of immigration from the South Asian subcontinent, the formation of Sinhala Buddhist and Tamil Hindu civilizations, the arrival of Arab Muslim traders, and European colonization by the Portuguese, then the Dutch, and finally the British. Selected texts depict perceptions of the country’s multiple linguistic and religious communities, as well as its political travails after independence in 1948, especially the ethnic violence that recurred from the 1950s until 2009, when the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were defeated by the Sri Lankan government’s armed forces. This wide-ranging anthology covers the aboriginal Veddhas, the earliest known inhabitants of the island; the Kings of Kandy, Sri Lanka’s last indigenous dynasty; twenty-first-century women who leave the island to work as housemaids in the Middle East; the forty thousand Sri Lankans killed by the tsunami in December 2004; and, through cutting-edge journalism and heart-wrenching poetry, the protracted violence that has scarred the country’s contemporary political history. Along with fifty-four images of paintings, sculptures, and architecture, The Sri Lanka Reader includes more than ninety classic and contemporary texts written by Sri Lankans and foreigners.
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The Evolution of an Ethnic Identity: The Tamils of Sri Lanka C. 300 BCE to C. 1200 CE
K Indrapala
4.0
This long awaited publication embodies the researches of a lifetime undertaken by Dr K Indrapala from the time he started his career as an academic in the University of Ceylon in 1960. It gives shape to his long held, though often controversial views that the Sinhalese and Tamils of Sri Lanka are descended from common ancestors who lived in the country in prehistoric and protohistoric times and have a shared history going back to over two thousand years. He argues that through a process of language replacement the north Indian Prakrit dialects spread among the vast majority of the people paving the way for the evolution of Sinhalese while Tamil became the dominant language in some parts of the island leading to the emergence of Sri Lankan Tamil. Buddhism, though at first common to both groups later became a religion associated with the Sinhalese. The rule of the Cola dynasty in the 11th century paved the way for the rise of Saivism among the Tamils. In the end Buddhism disappeared completely as a religion of the Sri Lankan Tamils and Saivism assumed dominance among them. The result was that religion in addition to language became a marker of ethnic identity. This research covers the period up to 1200 by which time the process of evolution had more or less stabilized and the chance of one absorbing the other eventually had receded, although assimilation of elements of one group into the other continued.
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90
A Naturalist's Guide to the Reptiles of Sri Lanka
Kanishka Ukuwela
4.0
This easy-to-use identification guide to the 150 reptile species most commonly seen in Sri Lanka is perfect for resident and visitor alike.
High-quality photographs from the authors are accompanied by detailed species descriptions, which include size, distribution, habits and habitat. The user-friendly introduction covers fascinating information on folklore associated with reptiles, snake topography, how to deal with snake bites and a glossary. Also included is an all-important checklist of all of the reptiles of Sri Lanka encompassing, for each species, its common and scientific name, and its IUCN status.
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91
The Jam Fruit Tree (The Burgher Trilogy, Book 1)
Carl Muller
4.0
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92
In My Mother's House: Civil War in Sri Lanka
Sharika Thiranagama and Gananath Obeyesekere
4.0
In May 2009, the Sri Lankan army overwhelmed the last stronghold of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam--better known as the Tamil Tigers--officially bringing an end to nearly three decades of civil war. Although the war has ended, the place of minorities in Sri Lanka remains uncertain, not least because the lengthy conflict drove entire populations from their homes. The figures are jarring: for example, all of the roughly 80,000 Muslims in northern Sri Lanka were expelled from the Tamil Tiger-controlled north, and nearly half of all Sri Lankan Tamils were displaced during the course of the civil war.Sharika Thiranagama's "In My Mother's House" provides ethnographic insight into two important groups of internally displaced people: northern Sri Lankan Tamils and Sri Lankan Muslims. Through detailed engagement with ordinary people struggling to find a home in the world, Thiranagama explores the dynamics within and between these two minority communities, describing how these relations were reshaped by violence, displacement, and authoritarianism. In doing so, she illuminates an often overlooked intraminority relationship and new social forms created through protracted war."In My Mother's House" revolves around three major themes: ideas of home in the midst of profound displacement; transformations of familial experience; and the impact of the political violence--carried out by both the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan state--on ordinary lives and public speech. Her rare focus on the effects and responses to LTTE political regulation and violence demonstrates that envisioning a peaceful future for post-conflict Sri Lanka requires taking stock of the new Tamil and Muslim identities forged by the civil war. These identities cannot simply be cast away with the end of the war but must be negotiated anew.
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93
Buddhism, Politics and the Limits of Law
Benjamin Schonthal
4.0
It is widely assumed that a well-designed and well-implemented constitution can help ensure religious harmony in modern states. Yet how correct is this assumption? Drawing on groundbreaking research from Sri Lanka, this book argues persuasively for another possibility: when it comes to religion, relying on constitutional law may not be helpful, but harmful; constitutional practice may give way to pyrrhic constitutionalism. Written in a lucid and direct style, and aimed at both specialists and non-specialists, Buddhism, Politics and the Limits of Law explains why constitutional law has deepened, rather than diminished, conflicts over religion in Sri Lanka. Examining the roles of Buddhist monks, civil society groups, political coalitions and more, the book provides the first extended study of the legal regulation of religion in Sri Lanka as well as the first book-length analysis of the intersections of Buddhism and contemporary constitutional law.
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94
The Devil Dancers
T. Thurai
4.0
The Devil Dancers by T. Thurai
Following Independence from the British, Ceylon's future looks bright. A new prime minister is creating a modern nation. But his legacy is an unexpected one. The deals that brought him to power turn into a time-bomb and the country is contorted by bloody race riots.
A widening rift divides Tamils and Sinhalese destroying communities. Neighbour turns on neighbour. As the terror increases, many lives are transformed: - Brilliant but naïve, Arjun is banished to a backwater where he falls hopelessly in love with Neleni, a married woman. But her rival also plans to ensnare him; - Murder and a flight from deadly pursuers introduce Asoka, a former monk and revolutionary, to Sriya. She offers him redemption, but Asoka is haunted by the past; - Sergeant Gunasekera's only diversion is crime thrillers - until he is forced to take responsibility for a group of refugees; - Ella, the maid, steals her ride to work on a commuter train. But she embarks on a different journey after her village is attacked by rioters; - Leela has all that money can buy until her husband is killed. Then, faced with bankruptcy, she strikes an unholy pact with her former lover; - Prime Minister Bandaranaike owes his election to a powerful Buddhist abbot. But there is a high price to pay.
In this atmosphere of violence and uncertainty, relationships fracture and families fragment reflecting the wider political turmoil. Yet, weaving its way through the mayhem is a single, twisted thread: the story of Neleni and Arjun.
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95
Midnight’s Descendants: South Asia from Partition to the Present Day
John Keay
4.0
An epic narrative history that compares and contrasts the fortunes of all the countries that make up South Asia.
If British India had not been partitioned in 1947, its population would today be the world’s largest. At c1.5 billion, Midnight’s Descendants (the offspring of those affected by ‘the midnight hour’ Partition) already outnumber Europeans and Chinese; and they are growing faster than either. They comprise all the peoples of what is now called ‘South Asia’ (the preferred term for the partitioned subcontinent of modern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, plus Nepal and Sri Lanka).
‘Midnight’s Descendants’ is the first history of the region as a whole. Correlating and contrasting the fortunes of all the constituent nations over the last six decades affords unique insights into what is hailed as one of the world’s most dynamic regions.
John Keay is an expert on the region and the book will be the first account to incorporate the rich story of South Asia’s transnational, or ‘diasporic’, peoples – from the overlooked narratives of the subcontinent to the rise of India as a global force, ‘Midnight’s Descendants’ will be expansive and tumultuous in the great tradition of India’s narrative epics.
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96
Song of the Sun God
Shankari Chandra
4.0
Nala and Rajan, a young couple, begin their married life in 1946, on the eve of Sri Lanka's independence from Britain. Arranged in marriage, they learn to love each other and protect their growing family, against the backdrop of increasing ethnic tension. As the country descends into a bloody civil war, Nala and Rajan must decide which path is best for their family; and live with the consequences of their mistakes.
The Song of the Sun God spans three continents and three generations of a family that remains dedicated to its homeland, whilst learning to embrace its new home. This deeply moving saga is about the wisdom, mistakes and sacrifices of our past that enable us to live more freely in the future. It is about finding home and forgiving family.
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97
Sri Lanka (DK Eyewitness Travel)
DK Publishing
4.0
A wealth of history, culture, and natural beauty awaits in Sri Lanka, an island nation located just off India's southern coast. This new first-edition "DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Sri Lanka" delivers the full "DK Eyewitness Travel Guides" treatment -- including the famous cutaway illustrations of major architectural and historic sights, museum floor plans, and maps.
Suggested itineraries highlight must-see sights and help travelers plan trips by length of stay, including a two-week tour, one week in the Cultural Triangle and the Hill Country, and two days in the capital, Colombo.
"DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Sri Lanka" is organized with maps and historical overviews for each region: Colombo, The West Coast, The South, Kandy and the Hill Country, The Cultural Triangle, The East, Jaffna and the North. Neighborhood walking maps indicate key sights not to miss, and the detailed maps for Colombo include a street finder index. Hotels and restaurant listings include DK Choice special recommendations and an array of options for all budget levels -- from boutique hideaways to lower-priced but high-value accommodations, family-run cafes and traditional cuisine to fine-dining.
With hundreds of full-color photographs, hand-drawn illustrations, and custom maps that illuminate every page, "DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Sri Lanka" truly shows this destination as no one else can.
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98
Saree
Su Dharmapala
4.0
Nila wasn’t born beautiful and is destined to go through life unnoticed… until she becomes a saree maker. As she works, Nila weaves into the silk a pattern of love, hope and devotion, which will prove to be invaluable to more lives than her own.
From the lush beauty of Sri Lanka, ravaged by bloody civil war, to India and its eventual resting place in Australia, this is the story of a precious saree and the lives it changes forever. Nila must find peace, Mahinda yearns for his true calling, Pilar is haunted by a terrible choice, Sarojini doubts her ability to love, Madhav is a holy fraud and Marion’s understanding of the very meaning of love is challenged and transformed. Each teeters between joy and pain, and each is touched by the power and beauty of the saree.
A breathtaking story of beauty, oppression and freedom… and of an enduring love that can never be broken. - See more at: http://books.simonandschuster.com.au/...
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99
War Journey: Diary of a Tamil Tiger
Malarva
4.0
‘The child you threatened once, the young shoot you stepped on, the Tamil you teased, is standing with a gun in front of you.’ This short diary was recovered from Malaravan’s kit after he was killed in action in 1992, when barely twenty. In it, he recounts his unit’s journey to Maankulam, the island’s granary, to fight a critical battle where they routed the Lankan military. The LTTE’s planning and tactics, the fervour and camaraderie of the young Tigers, and the actual combat are minutely chronicled. As a foil to the violence, Malaravan brings out the beauty of the Tamil forest and countryside and the humanity and support of the common people for them, despite their suffering under army rule. Bittersweet, fresh and lyrical at times, War Journey is a testament to the Tamil longing for a homeland and the wider conflict that once engulfed the island.
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100
Lonely Planet Sri Lanka
Lonely Planet
4.0
Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher
Lonely Planet Sri Lankais your passport to the most relevant, up-to-date advice on what to see and skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Follow in the footsteps of Buddha and modern-day pilgrims to the summit of Adam's Peak, wander the crumbling ruins and lost cities of the cultural triangle in the heart of the island or explore undiscovered beaches on the recently reopened east coast; all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of Sri Lanka and begin your journey now!
Inside Lonely Planet's Sri Lanka Travel Guide:
Colour maps and images throughout
Highlightsand itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interests
Insider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots
Essential infoat your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, prices
Honest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks miss
Cultural insights give you a richer, more rewarding travel experience - tea, cuisine, wildlife, history
More than50 maps
Covers Colombo, Galle, South, West and East coasts, the hill country, Jaffna, the ancient cities and more Authors: Written and researched by Lonely Planet, Ryan Ver Berkmoes, Stuart Butler, Iain Stewart.
About Lonely Planet: Since 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel media company with guidebooks to every destination, an award-winning website, mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet covers must-see spots but also enables curious travellers to get off beaten paths to understand more of the culture of the places in which they find themselves.
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